I haven't feel any of that among the companies I've contacted. I've been pretty selective about whom I've contacted, so there may be some selection bias there. But my choice has always been based on product/position fit, not on employee age. And HN has by far been the best source for things I'm interested in.
I'll admit I often consciously choose to wear my XKCD hoodie when I meet people for the first time. Not that I don't wear it a lot anyway, but ...
I kind of feel like Steve was sort of an existence proof that age no longer represents the cultural divide it might have at another time.
I don't think I made any claims about relative difficulty, or even in general that Biology is easy. If you look at my post, I have a ton of links to things I think I need to learn. I even included Intro to Biology on my course list. My viewpoint is not that tech people should should move into Bio-related fields because it's easier, but rather because it serves greater benefit to the world than using those skills to build 'cat picture sharing sites'. We have differing skill sets, but if we can become passably versed in each others fields and learn the basics, it would seem to make the challenges that need to be/are being faced a lot easier since we'd now be speaking the same language and can understand what needs to happen to reach those goals and why. I really appreciate your input and if you have any suggestions on starting points, that would be fantastic. My apologies if my post came off in a way that would suggest I was taking the difficulties of Biology for granted.
Actually, my comments were towards what Steve said, not what you said. Sorry that that wasn't clear.
Steve says biotech is data mining, and it's not. It's a physics problem. A lot of very, very hard physics problems. On systems that are hard to observe, since observing them tends to kill them and/or otherwise change the way they function.
Andy Grove made an even more egregious example of this a few years ago. In a talk he gave, he spoke at length about how biotech needed to learn from tech. Anybody that knows anything about the complexity of biology would find his comments ... well, calling it naive would be very kind.
Most people, including tech people, don't understand how vastly more complex biology is than tech.
It's not actually clear how tech can help biotech. There was a rush of work in the 90s related to sequence reconstruction that has been very useful in reducing a lot drudgery. But not necessarily much that has been able to move higher up the stack, stuff like systems biology. These systems are so complex and non-linear that analytical tools often get overwhelmed or don't produce meaningful results because the models and observable data are so radically simplified.
It's not that it shouldn't be worked on. It's just that indications of the likelihood of a singularity/inflection point aren't so high as seem to be often spoken of.
I find it a little disconcerting that the two primary things CL makes money from, housing and jobs, don't (obviously) fit for OfferUp, Grabio or HipSwap. Plus it looks like OfferUp only does posting from iOS for now. CL notwithstanding, seems like a lack of ubiquity is a show-stopper for adoption.
Suppose it's a bit off-topic, but would Steve have fired Steve? I suppose the less interesting but more likely answer is he wouldn't have worked for himself.
From what I've read from the book, it looks like Steve would have loved to have another Steve in the company. I think he would have liked someone who thought the same way he did.
Steve was very mercurial: at one point, he would think someone a saint and at another a devil, and visa versa. I could see that pattern be very explosive in dealing with someone like himself.
